Mobile communication devices have moved far beyond basic telephony over their decades-long development. Today's devices send and receive content of all kinds, broadly described as voice or data. Voice communications include everyday telephone calls to and from one cell phone to another or to and from a wired or “land-line” telephone and at present constitute the principle use of such devices. Data communications are on the increase, however, and can include, but are not limited to, music, video, text messages, and software.
Among presently available capabilities, today's devices can download and run software applications. These programs are typically of small size and are commonly known as applets. This ability has generated a marketplace for services for which customers can subscribe for a fee, typically on a monthly or per use basis. Some examples of such services include but are not limited to games; wireless chat rooms; personalized alerts for weather, news, traffic, sports, or the like; and geographical location services to name but a few of the available services.
Wide varieties of services are available within each category. For example, under the category of geographical location services a service provider may provide information regarding the location of the mobile device itself, directions from the mobile device to another location, or the location of another mobile device (such as one used by a minor child, for example) on the customer's service plan. Stated otherwise, the location request will fall into one of two categories: first, the location of the device making the request, or second, the location of something other than the requesting device itself, whether that is another mobile device or a specific address. Sometimes the request may include a request for directions from one to the other.
Generally speaking, a customer desiring a particular service may be required to download the appropriate applet from a service provider, which may be the communications service provider or an external service provider. Once the applet is downloaded, the service can be accessed by the customer executing the applet on the mobile device and a charge will be placed upon the customer's bill. Depending upon the service provided, a charge may be added to a customer's bill upon enrollment at a specified fee for a predetermined time period (usually a billing cycle) or on a per use basis. These fees are collected at regular intervals and accounted for. That is, the communications service provider will allocate the income from the service fees either totally to its own internal accounts if the communications service provider is providing the service applet and service or partially internally and partially to an external party there is an external party involved in providing the service. Particularly in the latter situation it is important to be able to determine which external party is providing what services and how often so that the income can be properly allocated.
When the customer makes a service request by executing a service applet, the service applet invokes the mobile device's own operating system, which transfers the request to the device's communications service provider. This request for service includes, at a minimum, an identifier specific to the device making the service request so that the service can ultimately be billed to the customer and a port designation. A port designation acts as an identifier for the particular applet being executed. As a broad analogy, the device identifier can be considered the street address of an apartment building to which a delivery is to be made and the port designation as the particular apartment (or applet) requesting the service. Previous to the applet being provided for service by the customers, the communications service provider will have assigned a specific port for use by the applet. In this manner, then, when the communications service provider receives a service request, the communications service provider can examine the request can be examined to see which port is being used by the mobile device to send the request, and, consequently, will know which service applet is requesting service. Stated otherwise, the communications service provider charges based upon which port is used to send the service request because each port is assigned to a specific service applet, such as those requesting location requests, and to no other service.
By way of example, a communications service provider may provide a location determination service through a location service provider, which provides global positioning services (GPS). Thus a customer could activate a location detection applet in a mobile communication device that would make a request for GPS location information of through the communications service provider, that is, the present assignee. Upon receipt of the location request, the communications service provider will note which port of the communication device the location request was routed through. Because the port will be exclusively assigned to, the communications service provider will know that income and expenses related to the request should be allocated according to a previous agreement between the communications service provider and for such services.
Overview
There is disclosed herein systems for and methods of operating a communication system, the method comprising receiving a location request from a communication device in a location determination system, wherein the location request is generated in response to a request for the location of the communication device made by an application running on the communication device, the location request includes a port identifier and a device identifier, and the device identifier identifies the communication device. The method further comprises transferring from the location determination system an authorization request that includes the device identifier and the port identifier, receiving the authorization request in an authorization system, processing the authorization request in the authorization system to determine an application identifier associated with the application based on the port identifier, processing the application identifier and the device identifier in the authorization system to determine if the application is authorized to run on the communication device, transferring an authorization response from the authorization system that indicates if the application is authorized for the communication device, receiving the authorization response into the location determination system, and transferring a response to the location request from the location determination system based on the authorization response.
There is also shown and described herein a communication system for determining whether to authorize a service request. The communication system comprises a location determination system configured to receive a location request from a communication device, wherein the location request is generated in response to a request for the location of the communication device made by an application running on the communication device, the location request includes a port identifier and a device identifier, and the device identifier identifies the communication device, transfer an authorization request that includes the device identifier and the port identifier, receiving an authorization response, and transfer a response to the location request based on the authorization response. The communication system further comprises an authorization system in communication with the location determination system and configured to receive the authorization request, process the authorization request to determine an application identifier associated with the application based on the port identifier, process the application identifier and the device identifier in the authorization system to determine if the application is authorized to run on the communication device, and transfer the authorization response from the authorization system that indicates if the application is authorized for the communication device.
A method of operating a communication system, the method comprising receiving an authorization request from a location determination system, wherein the authorization request includes a device identifier and a port identifier, wherein the location determination system generated the authorization request in response to receiving a location request from a communication device generated in response to a request for the location of the communication device made by an application running on the communication device, wherein the location request includes the port identifier and the device identifier, and the device identifier identifies the communication device. The method further comprises processing the authorization request to determine an application identifier associated with the application based on the port identifier, processing the application identifier and the device identifier to determine if the application is authorized to run on the communication device, and transferring an authorization response from the authorization system that indicates if the application is authorized for the communication device, wherein the location determination system receives the authorization response and transfers a response to the location request based on the authorization response.